In 2005, Quantic Dream started working on a short film in real-time 3D called The Casting, using the PS3 graphic engine we had just developed.

Our initial objective was to make a technical prototype to test the limits and performance of this new engine, but Sony, with whom we had not yet started working, quickly encouraged us to present it publicly at its booth at E3 in order to illustrate the graphic potential of the PS3, which was launched that same year.

Everything we learned from making the short, particularly the immense difficulty of creating emotion in real time, but also the importance of the actor's performance, facial motion capture, the challenge of lip synchronization and especially eye animation, would enable us to develop Heavy Rain.

After this somewhat fortuitous first effort (which succeeded in attracting the attention of the press and players, and largely contributed to creating interest in the small French company that is Quantic Dream), the idea of making it a recurrent principle quickly developed.